The CRU graph. Note that it is calibrated in tenths of a degree Celsius and that even that tiny amount of warming started long before the late 20th century. The horizontal line is totally arbitrary, just a visual trick. The whole graph would be a horizontal line if it were calibrated in whole degrees -- thus showing ZERO warming

Monday, August 04, 2008

Pesky British navy logbooks

Britain's great seafaring tradition is to provide a unique insight into modern climate change, thanks to thousands of Royal Navy logbooks that have survived from the 17th century onwards. The logbooks kept by every naval ship, ranging from Nelson's Victory and Cook's Endeavour down to the humblest frigate, are emerging as one of the world's best sources for long-term weather data. The discovery has been made by a group of British academics and Met Office scientists who are seeking new ways to plot historic changes in climate.

"This is a treasure trove," said Dr Sam Willis, a maritime historian and author who is affiliated with Exeter University's Centre for Maritime Historical Studies. "Ships' officers recorded air pressure, wind strength, air and sea temperature and other weather conditions. From those records scientists can build a detailed picture of past weather and climate."

A preliminary study of 6,000 logbooks has produced results that raise questions about climate change theories. One paper, published by Dr Dennis Wheeler, a Sunderland University geographer, in the journal The Holocene, details a surge in the frequency of summer storms over Britain in the 1680s and 1690s. Many scientists believe storms are a consequence of global warming, but these were the coldest decades of the so-called Little Ice Age that hit Europe from about 1600 to 1850.

Wheeler and his colleagues have since won European Union funding to extend this research to 1750. This shows that during the 1730s, Europe underwent a period of rapid warming similar to that recorded recently - and which must have had natural origins. Hints of such changes are already known from British records, but Wheeler has found they affected much of the north Atlantic too, and he has traced some of the underlying weather systems that caused it. His research will be published in the journal Climatic Change.

The ships' logs have also shed light on extreme weather events such as hurricanes. It is commonly believed that hurricanes form in the eastern Atlantic and track westwards, so scientists were shocked in 2005 when Hurricane Vince instead moved northeast to hit southern Spain and Portugal. Many interpreted this as a consequence of climate change; but Wheeler, along with colleagues at the University of Madrid, used old ships' logs to show that this had also happened in 1842, when a hurricane followed the same trajectory into Andalusia.

The potential of Royal Navy ships' logs to offer new insights into historic climate change was spotted by Wheeler after he began researching weather conditions during famous naval battles. Later, as global warming moved up the scientific agenda, he and others realised that the same data could shed light on historic climate change. He said: "British archives contain more than 100,000 Royal Navy logbooks from around 1670 to 1850 alone. They are a stunning resource."

Most of these earlier documents contain verbal descriptions of weather rather than numerical data, because ships lacked the instruments to take numerical readings. However, Wheeler and his colleagues found early Royal Navy officers recorded weather in consistent language. "It means we can deduce numerical values for wind strength and direction, temperature and rainfall," he said. The information will ultimately contribute to the International Comprehensive Ocean-Atmos-phere Data Set, a global database maintained by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a US government agency.

Wheeler makes clear he has no doubts about modern human-induced climate change. [He would be out on his ear if he said otherwise] He said: "Global warming is a reality, but what our data shows is that climate science is complex and that it is wrong to take particular events and link them to CO2 emissions. These records will give us a much clearer picture of what is really happening."

The Met Office has also set up a project, part-funded by Defra, the environment ministry, to study 900 logbooks kept by the East India Company on voyages between Europe and the Far East between 1780 and 1840. Its vessels carried thermometers and barometers so the data is of higher quality.

Faced with logs taken over so many voyages, the researchers have had to be selective. One of the most avid recorders of such data was Nelson himself, whose personal logbook records the air pressure and other readings he took up to several times daily.

Do you believe that most things in life balance out, even the weather? We have our happy days, unhappy ones, healthy days, less healthy ones, and then of course, our wet and dry spells, our cold and warm ones.

If you enjoy trying your luck whether it be at the casino, or on Wall Street, if you can stay in long enough, cycles have a way of turning life around for you. But at the card table, you do have the option of cashing in; but, at the weather table, you are stuck, that option is not your choice. Now, that we are embroiled in a discussion of global change, one has to wonder where the law of weather averages will hold true here. I'm just finishing a book on Connecticut weather, I'd love your input.

The book has been a year and a half in the writing. A huge task, and I labored over the final chapter which dealt with global change. Sure that has been warming since the mid 1980s, especially, and you can see that clearly when looking at the records, but the question remains whether this is relatively a temporary thing caused by natural cycles, or has man-made influences made the process irreversible.

The International Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) is convinced and has data to show, that natural cycles alone could not account for the degree of warming which has taken place. But many of these people are not frontline weather forecasters, and if there are sceptics in the bunch, these by and large come from this group. We deal with change all the time. We are familiar will the limitation of the computer model equations and inputs. Look at the past weekend-the machines projected a few Sunday showers, and instead, we had a deluge, all day. If these inputs and equations have trouble in the short-term, can we truly trust them to tell us a 20-year or 50-year forecast?

Maybe there will be a law of weather averages even here, and we will return to a colder cycle. But one huge advantage to going green is that we will clear the air pollution level to a much more desirable level. It is about time that we controlled pollutants like hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides as well smog and ozone - and then there are the political and social aspects of the change. I just hope that if we do go through a colder cycle, green folks don't get cold feet.

Cool ocean temperatures in the southern Pacific Ocean -- a phenomenon known as La Nina -- chilled sunny expectations this summer for thousands of visitors to Mount Rainier National Park.

Those who arrived here in July planning to backpack or hike its famous sub-alpine wildflower meadows found snow instead, six feet in places, though sunny daytime temperatures reach into the 70s.

The popular mountain that draws 1.5 million visitors each year received 950 inches of snow last winter, 300 inches more than its 650-inch average. Park officials said a cooler than usual spring also pushed back the thaw.

"A lot of people were disappointed to come and find snowy meadows," said Mike Punches, a park interpreter at the Henry M. Jackson Visitor Center at Paradise, located 5,400 feet above sea level. "Normally the wildflower season is all of July and August. The early bloomers come the first of July.

Eco-campaigners claim that climate catastrophe is a virtual certainty. A little bit of maths and logic suggests otherwise

For some years now, governments, industry, and private citizens have been regularly chastised by environmental activists for not doing more to limit greenhouse gases, the presumed cause of global warming. But lately a far more serious charge has been made. In June, the oft-quoted NASA climate scientist James Hansen appeared before a United States congressional committee. He said that the directors of fossil-fuel companies `should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature' (1).

But these people shouldn't be prosecuted just for producing fossil fuels. Hansen thinks they should also be prosecuted because, as he wrote in the UK Guardian: `Instead of moving heavily into renewable energies, fossil companies choose to spread doubt about global warming, as tobacco companies discredited the smoking-cancer link.' (2) In other words, fossil fuel company directors should be prosecuted for what they say, as well as for what they do.

It's a common type of argument, familiar to anyone acquainted with totalitarian regimes: the nation (or revolution, race, class, etc) is in grave peril from (fill in the blank). But there are traitors among us who spread lies, seeking to weaken our resolve. They must be restrained (temporarily, of course) for the good of us all.

But there's no reason this policy should only be applied to peddlers of coal and oil. Anyone who casts doubt on the reality of global warming would be equally guilty of imperilling the entire Earth. In the face of the imminent and overwhelming threat of catastrophic climate change, strict measures would (regrettably) have to be taken.

Environmental activists describe anyone who is sceptical of the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) as a `climate-change denier'. The similarity of this phrase to the pejorative epithet `Holocaust denier' is not accidental. If you deny something, you believe it's false. If you're sceptical about it, you're not convinced it's true. This is an important logical distinction. But it's one that environmental activists are happy to obscure. It's also important to distinguish the varying degrees of climate-change scepticism that exist. For example, someone might be sceptical about one or more of these commonly accepted statements:

Global warming is really happening.

Global warming is caused by man-made greenhouse gases (GHGs).

Global warming will be harmful.

GHG emissions must be reduced in order to combat global warming.

And if there really is an urgent need to reduce GHG emissions, all four of these statements must be true. Predictably, James Hansen has no doubt: `I can assert that these conclusions have a certainty exceeding 99 per cent.' (3)

But just how likely is it that all four of these statements are true? Fortunately, this question is easy to answer. All we need to do is consult the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), along with an elementary logic textbook.

The IPCC Synthesis Report of 2007 is scrupulous in specifying the probability of the various statements it makes about climate change. For example, consider this sentence on page 30: `Average Northern Hemisphere temperatures during the second half of the twentieth century were very likely higher than during any other 50-year period in the last 500 years and likely the highest in at least the past 1,300 years.' And this one on page 39: `Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic GHG concentrations.' The italics are in the original.

Obviously this supports our statements 1 and 2. What the italicised words mean in terms of the percentage likelihood of causation or occurrence is clearly set out on page 27:

95-99 per cent: Extremely likely

90-94 per cent: Very likely

66-89 per cent: Likely

50-65 per cent: More likely than not

33-66 per cent: As likely as not

Below 33 per cent: Unlikely

(The numbers given here for `more likely than not' and `as likely as not' aren't misprints: the ranges overlap in the report itself.)

Now we'll turn to our Logic for Beginners textbook. Suppose the two statements A and B are independent: that is, the truth of A doesn't make B any more or less probable. Then the probability of them both being true is equal to the probability of A multiplied by the probability of B. Consider the classic textbook example of the coin toss. The likelihood of tossing heads or tails when tossing a coin isn't affected by previous tosses: no matter how many heads you've tossed already, the probability that the next will be heads is still fifty-fifty. (Many a gambler has come to grief by ignoring this basic principle.) So the two statements:

A. The first toss is heads.

B. The second toss is heads.

are independent. Since the probability of each statement is 50 per cent, or 0.5, the probability of tossing two heads in a row is 0.5 x 0.5 = 0.25, or 25 per cent.

When the statements aren't independent, the calculation is a bit more complicated. And obviously our statements 2, 3, and 4 aren't independent of 1. But since the IPCC probability estimates take these dependencies into account, the simple multiplication rule of the coin toss example will give the correct result.

As we've seen, the IPCC rates statement 1 as `very likely', so the probability of this statement is in the range 90-94 per cent. The IPCC also rates statement 2 as `very likely'. Using the multiplication rule, we can calculate the probability of statements 1 and 2 being true together as 81-88 per cent. This falls within the range the IPCC describes as `likely'.

So we can see already that James Hansen's claim of `certainty exceeding 99 per cent' goes well beyond the evidence provided by the IPCC report. It seems he's placed himself firmly on the lunatic fringe of environmental activism.

Of course, this doesn't mean that climate-change scepticism is warranted. The probability that statements 1 and 2 are both true is still over 80 per cent, according to the IPCC data. But statements 3 and 4 have to be considered as well. Again, all four must be true if the calls for urgent action on GHGs have any merit.

The IPCC report examines a number of scenarios that make different assumptions about world population and economic growth. For each scenario, it estimates how much average global temperature would rise by the end of the twenty-first century. These estimates range from 0.6 to 4.0 degrees. The IPCC also estimates what effects these different levels of global warming might have on weather, food production, ecological systems, human health, and so on. For the most part, these effects are harmful ones, such as increased drought, heatwaves, floods, and more intense storms.

But some benefits are also mentioned. Under some of the scenarios, longer growing seasons and increased precipitation result in an overall increase in global food production. Warmer winters also have some health benefits, and significantly reduce energy consumption.

However, the IPCC report makes no predictions about how much future global warming will occur, since it doesn't assign probabilities to any of these scenarios. Although some amount of warming is predicted in all of the scenarios, the report reveals much uncertainty about how harmful the effects might be. Nevertheless, let's do our best for the case against GHGs, and assign statement 3 to the IPCC's `likely' category. This gives it a probability range of 66-89 per cent.

Using the multiplication rule once again, we find that the probability of statements 1, 2, and 3 all being true is 53-79 per cent. This falls mainly within the range the IPCC describes as `more likely than not'.

Finally we come to statement 4. Given statement 2, it may seem obvious that reducing man-made GHGs would reduce global warming. But unfortunately, the physical world is more complicated than that. The fact that X is the cause of Y doesn't guarantee that doing something to X will have any effect on Y. To choose a simple example, you can't fix a broken window by getting rid of the rock that broke it. And many environmentalists - including James Hansen - talk ominously about `tipping points', beyond which further global warming would be unavoidable whatever we did.

So there's no guarantee that reducing man-made GHGs would have any effect on global warming. Still, let's assume our statement 4 is also `likely' to be true. Using the multiplication rule one last time, it turns out the probability of statements 1 through 4 all being true together is 35-70 per cent. This falls almost entirely within the range the IPCC calls `as likely as not'.

It's easy to predict the environmentalist response: `We should err on the side of caution, and try to cut GHG emissions anyway.' This would be perfectly reasonable if limiting GHGs would itself have no adverse consequences. But implementing policies like those set out in the Kyoto Protocol would have significant economic costs.

More strident environmentalists would no doubt like to tip this balance by replacing our statement 3 with something like: `Global warming will be catastrophic.' But there's nothing in the IPCC report that justifies such a claim. This puts it in the same league with statements like: `Man-made GHGs have saved us from another ice age.' Based on the IPCC report, both statements are equally likely.

People are notoriously error-prone when reasoning about probability. When told that two statements are each very likely to be true, most people immediately conclude that the two taken together are just as probable. But this isn't so. Claiming that two things are true just gives you twice as many opportunities to be wrong. Uncertainties multiply, however slight each individual one might be.

Science can't always give us definite answers to our questions, even when the issues involved are very important to us. But it often can tell us how certain we should allow ourselves to be. And the certainty expressed by far too many environmentalists goes well beyond what the science will support.

Comment on "Global warming hits Midmar Dam" (on this blog July 23) by Umgeni Water

The article reaches the opposite conclusion to what is in the published paper "Toxic blooms in Midmar Dam". This constitutes an incorrect interpretation of the paper. CSIR researcher Dr Paul Oberholster and colleague Dr Anna-Marie Botha actually conclude that the winter bloom of Microcystis spp. during 2005 occurred with a low average surface water temperature of 10,1øC and that this is "totally antithetical" to the norm. In other words, it is not temperature that seemed to be the cause of the algae bloom but "that nitrogen plays a large role in the changes to the phytoplankton community composition". There is even reference in the publication to the fact that the sampled sites of the study "are part of the Midmar game park sanctuary, and waterfowl may be a contributory factor to the high nutrient values in the winter months".

Midmar Dam, like other Umgeni Water (UW) dam water resources, is comprehensively monitored by UW for a wide variety of analyses, including algae down to genus level. Sampling is done near the wall and is representative of the main body of water where water is abstracted for treatment. This enables Umgeni Water to identify and react to potential problems so that treated water is always safe to drink.

There is currently no major change being seen in the behaviour of the water temperature in the Midmar impoundment. On the contrary, median annual temperatures have cooled slightly in recent years. Winter minimum temperatures have behaved similarly. While climate change is a concern and is receiving attention at Umgeni Water, it is the possibility of droughts and floods that are by far the most important problems needing attention.

The article refers to "algae flowers". An algal "bloom" is not an algal "flower" (most are unicellular and cannot flower). A bloom is the name given to a proliferation of algae in very high numbers, usually due to a plentiful supply of nutrients. Without these nutrients, excessive growth is not possible, regardless of temperature. Temperature can have an effect on algal blooms, but different algae have different temperature needs and some algae can develop blooms at low temperatures.

Toxin-producing algae have been detected in Midmar (mostly in summer), but these algae can be found almost everywhere. Midmar has not yet experienced an algal bloom where potential toxin-producing algal numbers have developed to the point where abstracted water quality problems are likely, at any time of the year. The WHO suggests a limit of 100 000 cyanobacterial cells/mL alert level in the water resource, at which cyanotoxins could be present up to 20ug/L.

The average cyanobacterial counts are less than 20 000 cells/ml for the period 1994 to 2008.

In Midmar, small blooms of other algal types that cause related problems have been encountered, but have been minor in nature (causing slight filter blocking). A number of the minor algal blooms that have occurred in Midmar since Umgeni Water monitoring began in the late eighties have occurred in late winter, so this appears to be normal behaviour for this impoundment. These blooms have mostly been of algae called diatoms which do not produce any toxic substances.

All relevant water resource managers involved at Midmar Dam (including the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry and Umgeni Water) are fully aware of the potential problems algae can cause. If a problem is seen to be developing, a wide range of actions can then be taken.

Besides trying to prevent nutrient enrichment in the first place, spilling the dam can remove the problem, provided that there is enough water, and in dams like Midmar there are a number of abstraction depths that can be strategically selected to avoid sucking in algae. Pre-treatment of the raw water can be undertaken to remove the algae, and even more careful than normal treatment processes followed.

At other dams, such as Inanda, where far more nutrients are present and there have been significant and potentially problematic algal blooms in the past, detailed monitoring (including analysis of the algal toxins) has been undertaken. While toxins have been detected in low amounts in some samples, the work has shown that the raw water sent to treatment plants has been entirely safe, even when specifically problematic algae (mostly cyanobacteria, also called blue-green algae) have been present in large numbers. Additionally, Umgeni Water's treatment plants, which are designed to be effective in removing algae, can be and are operated with additional and even more comprehensive treatment to ensure removal of these problems (such as the use of activated carbon). Were a problem algal bloom to affect Midmar, similar additional monitoring and treatment would be undertaken.

Problem algae (both in terms of numbers and particularly the presence of cyanobacteria of concern) are far more likely to result from nutrient enrichment in a dam than from temperature changes. These problems are more likely in summer, but would be of concern no matter what time of year they might occur. The sources of these nutrients are related to the land-use pattern around the water resource.

Garbage collectors would inspect San Francisco residents' trash to make sure pizza crusts aren't mixed in with chip bags or wine bottles under a proposal by Mayor Gavin Newsom. And if residents or businesses don't separate the coffee grounds from the newspapers, they would face fines of up to $1,000 and eventually could have their garbage service stopped.

The plan to require proper sorting of refuse would be the nation's first mandatory recycling and composting law. It would direct garbage collectors to inspect the trash to make sure it is put into the right blue, black or green bin, according to a draft of the legislation prepared by the city's Department of the Environment.

The program is designed to limit the amount of food and foliage that goes into the city-contracted landfill in Alameda County, where the refuse takes up costly space and decomposes to form methane, one of the most potent of greenhouse gases. It will also help San Francisco, which city officials say currently diverts 70 percent of its waste from landfills, achieve a goal set by the Board of Supervisors to divert 75 percent by 2010 and have zero waste by 2020.

"If we're truly going to be the city we promote ourselves to be, a world-class, 21st century city that advances its values and principles, we're going to have to try new things," Newsom said Thursday. "People are used to doing things a certain way. And when you change that, they say it can't be done. Well, we've proved them wrong." He pointed to a doubling in the city's recycling rate from 1996 to 2008, but acknowledged "it will take some time" to win over hearts and minds. "People don't knowingly want to waste," Environment Department Director Jared Blumenfeld said. "At the moment, we have a missed opportunity, which is that we're at a 70 percent recycling rate. Overnight we could be at 92 percent if everything people are throwing away that could be reused or recycled actually was."

Plenty of other cities, from Pittsburgh to San Diego, have mandatory recycling. None, however, requires all food waste be composted. Seattle passed a law in 2003 requiring people to have a compost bin but it did not mandate that all food waste go in there. "If they want to throw away food, that's their right," said Brett Stav, a planning and development specialist at Seattle Public Utilities. "We're not banning food from the garbage."

Skeptics call Newsom's plan unworkable and see it as the latest intrusion from heavy-handed city government, which has outlawed smoking in parks and feeding pigeons in much of the city. Duboce Triangle resident Mark Cromwell, a 53-year-old personal assistant, called the proposed law "laughable." "Do we want our garbage collectors to be the meter maids of trash?" Cromwell said. "Good luck placing blame on the recycling criminal, especially in big apartment buildings. I will stop recycling if this law goes into effect just to become an eventual test case. Dictators are anathema, no matter which side of the political spectrum they come from."

The company with the city's garbage and recycling contract also is hesitant to take on enforcement, saying it could slow down service and require extra data entry and information tracking. "We support the goals of the proposed ordinance but believe it needs refinements to be workable for everyone involved, especially the customers," said Robert Reed, a spokesman for Norcal Waste Systems. Norcal is the parent company of San Francisco collectors Sunset Scavenger Co. and Golden Gate Disposal and Recycling Co.

"We are concerned about draft provisions that envision our drivers policing the contents of refuse containers and possibly withholding service if violations were found," Reed said. "A significant increase in time required to service each customer location would mean we would need to have more routes, which means more drivers, trucks, fuel and related resources."

The proposal, which city officials said the mayor could bring to the Board of Supervisors in about a month, calls for every residence and business in the city to have three separate color-coded bins for waste: blue for recycling, green for compost and black for trash. Food vendors would have to supply them for customers. Managers of multifamily or commercial properties would be required to provide them for tenants or employees. Trash collectors would be required to check the bins for proper sorting, which Blumenfeld said would require only a cursory visual inspection, not combing through the contents.

If they found a bin with the wrong material in it, collectors would leave a tag on the container identifying the problem. A second time would result in another tag and a written notice to the service subscriber. On a third offense, the collector could refuse to empty the container, although this would not apply to multifamily properties like apartment buildings or to commercial properties with multiple tenants and joint collection. The city could also levy a fine of up to $500 for the first violation, $750 for the second in one year and $1,000 for the third in a year.

Apartment landlords are concerned that they'll have to pay for a tenant's behavior and won't be able to pass the fine along, said Sean Pritchard, the government affairs director for the San Francisco Apartment Association. "How do you determine which tenant is at fault?" Pritchard said. "Or do we indiscriminately start fining all tenants for one tenant's poor choice of judgment?" Blumenfeld called that fear unnecessary, saying, "We won't enforce against owners of apartment buildings if their tenants don't do this."

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Background

Context for the minute average temperature change recorded: At any given time surface air temperatures around the world range over about 100°C. Even in the same place they can vary by nearly that much seasonally and as much as 30°C or more in a day. A minute rise in average temperature in that context is trivial if it is not meaningless altogether. Scientists are Warmists for the money it brings in, not because of the facts

This site is in favour of things that ARE good for the environment. That the usual Greenie causes are good for the environment is however disputed. Greenie policies can in fact be actively bad for the environment -- as with biofuels, for instance

This Blog by John Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.), writing from Brisbane, Australia.

I am the most complete atheist you can imagine. I don't believe in Karl Marx, Jesus Christ or global warming. And I also don't believe in the unhealthiness of salt, sugar and fat. How skeptical can you get? If sugar is bad we are all dead

And when it comes to "climate change", I know where the skeletons are buried

Warmists depend heavily on ice cores for their figures about the atmosphere of the past. But measuring the deep past through ice cores is a very shaky enterprise, which almost certainly takes insufficient account of compression effects. The apparently stable CO2 level of 280ppm during the Holocene could in fact be entirely an artifact of compression at the deeper levels of the ice cores. . Perhaps the gas content of an ice layer approaches a low asymptote under pressure. Dr Zbigniew Jaworowski's criticisms of the assumed reliability of ice core measurements are of course well known. And he studied them for over 30 years.

The world's first "Green" party was the Nazi party -- and Greenies are just as Fascist today in their endeavours to dictate to us all and in their attempts to suppress dissent from their claims.

Was Pope Urban VIII the first Warmist? Below we see him refusing to look through Galileo's telescope. People tend to refuse to consider evidence— if what they might discover contradicts what they believe.

Warmism is a powerful religion that aims to control most of our lives. It is nearly as powerful as the Catholic Church once was

Believing in global warming has become a sign of virtue. Strange in a skeptical era. There is clearly a need for faith

Climate change is the religion of people who think they're too smart for religion

Some advice from the Buddha that the Green/Left would do well to think about: "Three things cannot be long hidden: The Sun, The Moon and The Truth"

Leftists have faith that warming will come back some day. And they mock Christians for believing in the second coming of Christ! They obviously need religion

Global warming has in fact been a religious doctrine for over a century. Even Charles Taze Russell, the founder of Jehovah's Witnesses, believed in it

A rosary for the church of global warming (Formerly the Catholic church): "Hail warming, full of grace, blessed art thou among climates and blessed is the fruit of thy womb panic"

Pope Francis is to the Catholic church what Obama is to America -- a mistake, a fool and a wrecker

Global warming is the predominant Leftist lie of the 21st century. No other lie is so influential. The runner up lie is: "Islam is a religion of peace". Both are rankly absurd.

"When it comes to alarmism, we’re all deniers; when it comes to climate change, none of us are" -- Dick Lindzen

The EPA does everything it can get away with to shaft America and Americans

Cromwell's famous plea: "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken" was ignored by those to whom it was addressed -- to their great woe. Warmists too will not consider that they may be wrong ..... "Bowels" was a metaphor for compassion in those days

Inorganic Origin of Petroleum: "The theory of Inorganic Origin of Petroleum (synonyms: abiogenic, abiotic, abyssal, endogenous, juvenile, mineral, primordial) states that petroleum and natural gas was formed by non-biological processes deep in the Earth, crust and mantle. This contradicts the traditional view that the oil would be a "fossil fuel" produced by remnants of ancient organisms. Oil is a hydrocarbon mixture in which a major constituent is methane CH4 (a molecule composed of one carbon atom bonded to four hydrogen atoms). Occurrence of methane is common in Earth's interior and in space. The inorganic theory contrasts with the ideas that posit exhaustion of oil (Peak Oil), which assumes that the oil would be formed from biological processes and thus would occur only in small quantities and sets, tending to exhaust. Some oil drilling now goes 7 miles down, miles below any fossil layers

As the Italian chemist Primo Levi reflected in Auschwitz, carbon is ‘the only element that can bind itself in long stable chains without a great expense of energy, and for life on Earth (the only one we know so far) precisely long chains are required. Therefore carbon is the key element of living substance.’ The chemistry of carbon (2) gives it a unique versatility, not just in the artificial world, but also, and above all, in the animal, vegetable and – speak it loud! – human kingdoms.

David Archibald: "The more carbon dioxide we can put into the atmosphere, the better life on Earth will be for human beings and all other living things."

WISDOM:

"It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong." --- Richard P. Feynman.
Consensus is invoked only in situations where the science is not solid enough - Michael Crichton

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

"The desire to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it" -- H L Mencken

'Nothing is more terrible than ignorance in action' -- Goethe

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” -- Voltaire

Lord Salisbury: "No lesson seems to be so deeply inculcated by experience of life as that you should never trust experts. If you believe doctors, nothing is wholesome; if you believe theologians, nothing is innocent; if you believe soldiers, nothing is safe."

Calvin Coolidge said, "If you see 10 troubles coming down the road, you can be sure that nine will run into the ditch before they reach you." He could have been talking about Warmists.

Some advice from long ago for Warmists: "If ifs and ans were pots and pans,there'd be no room for tinkers". It's a nursery rhyme harking back to Middle English times when "an" could mean "if". Tinkers were semi-skilled itinerant workers who fixed holes and handles in pots and pans -- which were valuable household items for most of our history. Warmists are very big on "ifs", mays", "might" etc. But all sorts of things "may" happen, including global cooling

Bertrand Russell knew about consensus: "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.”

There goes another beautiful theory about to be murdered by a brutal gang of facts. - Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French writer and moralist (1613-1680)

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate" -- William of Occam

Was Paracelsus a 16th century libertarian? His motto was: "Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest" which means "Let no man belong to another who can belong to himself." He was certainly a rebel in his rejection of authority and his reliance on observable facts and is as such one of the founders of modern medicine

"In science, refuting an accepted belief is celebrated as an advance in knowledge; in religion it is condemned as heresy". (Bob Parks, Physics, U of Maryland). No prizes for guessing how global warming skepticism is normally responded to.

"Almost all professors of the arts and sciences are egregiously conceited, and derive their happiness from their conceit" -- Erasmus

"The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. For him, scepticism is the highest of duties; blind faith the one unpardonable sin." -- Thomas H. Huxley

Time was, people warning the world "Repent - the end is nigh!" were snickered at as fruitcakes. Now they own the media and run the schools.

"One of the sources of the Fascist movement is the desire to avoid a too-rational and too-comfortable world" -- George Orwell, 1943 in Can Socialists Be Happy?

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts -- Bertrand Russell

“Affordable energy in ample quantities is the lifeblood of the industrial societies and a prerequisite for the economic development of the others.” -- John P. Holdren, Science Adviser to President Obama. Published in Science 9 February 2001

The closer science looks at the real world processes involved in climate regulation the more absurd the IPCC's computer driven fairy tale appears. Instead of blithely modeling climate based on hunches and suppositions, climate scientists would be better off abandoning their ivory towers and actually measuring what happens in the real world.' -- Doug L Hoffman

Something no Warmist could take on board: "Knuth once warned a correspondent, "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Prof. Donald Knuth, whom some regard as the world's smartest man

"To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective. They are the barbarians at the gate we have to stand against" -- Rich Kozlovich

“We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.“ – Timothy Wirth,
President of the UN Foundation

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?” – Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)

Leftists generally and Warmists in particular very commonly ascribe disagreement with their ideas to their opponent being "in the pay" of someone else, usually "Big Oil", without troubling themselves to provide any proof of that assertion. They are so certain that they are right that that seems to be the only reasonable explanation for opposition to them. They thus reveal themselves as the ultimate bigots -- people with fixed and rigid ideas.

ABOUT:

This is one of TWO skeptical blogs that I update daily. During my research career as a social scientist, I was appalled at how much writing in my field was scientifically lacking -- and I often said so in detail in the many academic journal articles I had published in that field. I eventually gave up social science research, however, because no data ever seemed to change the views of its practitioners. I hoped that such obtuseness was confined to the social scientists but now that I have shifted my attention to health related science and climate related science, I find the same impermeability to facts and logic. Hence this blog and my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog. I may add that I did not come to either health or environmental research entirely without credentials. I had several academic papers published in both fields during my social science research career

Update: After 8 years of confronting the frankly childish standard of reasoning that pervades the medical journals, I have given up. I have put the blog into hibernation. In extreme cases I may put up here some of the more egregious examples of medical "wisdom" that I encounter. Greenies and food freaks seem to be largely coterminous. My regular bacon & egg breakfasts would certainly offend both -- if only because of the resultant methane output

Since my academic background is in the social sciences, it is reasonable to ask what a social scientist is doing talking about global warming. My view is that my expertise is the most relevant of all. It seems clear to me from what you will see on this blog that belief in global warming is very poorly explained by history, chemistry, physics or statistics.

Warmism is prophecy, not science. Science cannot foretell the future. Science can make very accurate predictions based on known regularities in nature (e.g. predicting the orbits of the inner planets) but Warmism is the exact opposite of that. It predicts a DEPARTURE from the known regularities of nature. If we go by the regularities of nature, we are on the brink of an ice age.

And from a philosophy of science viewpoint, far from being "the science", Warmism is not even an attempt at a factual statement, let alone being science. It is not a meaningful statement about the world. Why? Because it is unfalsifiable -- making it a religious, not a scientific statement. To be a scientific statement, there would have to be some conceivable event that disproved it -- but there appears to be none. ANY event is hailed by Warmists as proving their contentions. Only if Warmists were able to specify some fact or event that would disprove their theory would it have any claim to being a scientific statement. So the explanation for Warmist beliefs has to be primarily a psychological and political one -- which makes it my field

And, after all, Al Gore's academic qualifications are in social science also -- albeit very pissant qualifications.

A "geriatric" revolt: The scientists who reject Warmism tend to be OLD! Your present blogger is one of those. There are tremendous pressures to conformity in academe and the generally Leftist orientation of academe tends to pressure everyone within it to agree to ideas that suit the Left. And Warmism is certainly one of those ideas. So old guys are the only ones who can AFFORD to declare the Warmists to be unclothed. They either have their careers well-established (with tenure) or have reached financial independence (retirement) and so can afford to call it like they see it. In general, seniors in society today are not remotely as helpful to younger people as they once were. But their opposition to the Warmist hysteria will one day show that seniors are not completely irrelevant after all. Experience does count (we have seen many such hysterias in the past and we have a broader base of knowledge to call on) and our independence is certainly an enormous strength. Some of us are already dead. (Reid Bryson and John Daly are particularly mourned) and some of us are very senior indeed (e.g. Bill Gray and Vince Gray) but the revolt we have fostered is ever growing so we have not labored in vain.

Jimmy Carter Classic Quote from 1977: "Because we are now running out of gas and oil, we must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation and to the use of coal and permanent renewable energy sources, like solar power.

SOME POINTS TO PONDER:

Today’s environmental movement is the current manifestation of the totalitarian impulse. It is ironic that the same people who condemn the black or brown shirts of the pre WW2 period are blind to the current manifestation simply because the shirts are green.

Climate is just the sum of weather. So if you cannot forecast the weather a month in advance, you will not be able to forecast the climate 50 years in advance. And official meteorologists such as Britain's Met Office and Australia's BOM, are very poor forecasters of weather. The Met office has in fact given up on making seasonal forecasts because they have so often got such forecasts embarrassingly wrong. Their global-warming-powered "models" just did not deliver

Hearing a Government Funded Scientist say let me tell you the truth, is like hearing a Used Car Salesman saying let me tell you the truth.

A strange Green/Left conceit: They seem to think (e.g. here) that no-one should spend money opposing them and that conservative donors must not support the election campaigns of Congressmen they agree with

David Brower, founder Sierra Club: “Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license"

After three exceptionally cold winters in the Northern hemisphere, the Warmists are chanting: "Warming causes cold". Even if we give that a pass for logic, it still inspires the question: "Well, what are we worried about"? Cold is not going to melt the icecaps is it?"

It's a central (but unproven) assumption of the Warmist "models" that clouds cause warming. Odd that it seems to cool the temperature down when clouds appear overhead!

To make out that the essentially trivial warming of the last 150 years poses some sort of threat, Warmists postulate positive feedbacks that might cut in to make the warming accelerate in the near future. Amid their theories about feedbacks, however, they ignore the one feedback that is no theory: The reaction of plants to CO2. Plants gobble up CO2 and the more CO2 there is the more plants will flourish and hence gobble up yet more CO2. And the increasing crop yields of recent years show that plantlife is already flourishing more. The recent rise in CO2 will therefore soon be gobbled up and will no longer be around to bother anyone. Plants provide a huge NEGATIVE feedback in response to increases in atmospheric CO2

Every green plant around us is made out of carbon dioxide that the plant has grabbed out of the atmosphere. That the plant can get its carbon from such a trace gas is one of the miracles of life. It admittedly uses the huge power of the sun to accomplish such a vast filtrative task but the fact that a dumb plant can harness the power of the sun so effectively is also a wonder. We live on a rather improbable planet. If a science fiction writer elsewhere in the universe described a world like ours he might well be ridiculed for making up such an implausible tale.

Greenies are the sand in the gears of modern civilization -- and they intend to be.

The Greenie message is entirely emotional and devoid of all logic. They say that polar ice will melt and cause a big sea-level rise. Yet 91% of the world's glacial ice is in Antarctica, where the average temperature is around minus 40 degrees Celsius. The melting point of ice is zero degrees. So for the ice to melt on any scale the Antarctic temperature would need to rise by around 40 degrees, which NOBODY is predicting. The median Greenie prediction is about 4 degrees. So where is the huge sea level rise going to come from? Mars? And the North polar area is mostly sea ice and melting sea ice does not raise the sea level at all. Yet Warmists constantly hail any sign of Arctic melting. That the melting of floating ice does not raise the water level is known as Archimedes' principle. Archimedes demonstrated it around 2,500 years ago. That Warmists have not yet caught up with that must be just about the most inspissated ignorance imaginable. The whole Warmist scare defies the most basic physics. Yet at the opening of 2011 we find the following unashamed lying by James Hansen: "We will lose all the ice in the polar ice cap in a couple of decades". Sadly, what the Vulgate says in John 1:5 is still only very partially true: "Lux in tenebris lucet". There is still much darkness in the minds of men.

The repeated refusal of Warmist "scientists" to make their raw data available to critics is such a breach of scientific protocol that it amounts to a confession in itself. Note, for instance Phil Jones' Feb 21, 2005 response to Warwick Hughes' request for his raw climate data: "We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?" Looking for things that might be wrong with a given conclusion is of course central to science. But Warmism cannot survive such scrutiny. So even after "Climategate", the secrecy goes on.

Most Greenie causes are at best distractions from real environmental concerns (such as land degradation) and are more motivated by a hatred of people than by any care for the environment

Global warming has taken the place of Communism as an absurdity that "liberals" will defend to the death regardless of the evidence showing its folly. Evidence never has mattered to real Leftists

‘Global warming’ has become the grand political narrative of the age, replacing Marxism as a dominant force for controlling liberty and human choices. -- Prof. P. Stott

The modern environmental movement arose out of the wreckage of the New Left. They call themselves Green because they're too yellow to admit they're really Reds. So Lenin's birthday was chosen to be the date of Earth Day. Even a moderate politician like Al Gore has been clear as to what is needed. In "Earth in the Balance", he wrote that saving the planet would require a "wrenching transformation of society".

For centuries there was a scientific consensus which said that fire was explained by the release of an invisible element called phlogiston. That theory is universally ridiculed today. Global warming is the new phlogiston. Though, now that we know how deliberate the hoax has been, it might be more accurate to call global warming the New Piltdown Man. The Piltdown hoax took 40 years to unwind. I wonder....

Motives: Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is generally to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Policies: The only underlying theme that makes sense of all Greenie policies is hatred of people. Hatred of other people has been a Greenie theme from way back. In a report titled "The First Global Revolution" (1991, p. 104) published by the "Club of Rome", a Greenie panic outfit, we find the following statement: "In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill.... All these dangers are caused by human intervention... The real enemy, then, is humanity itself." See here for many more examples of prominent Greenies saying how much and how furiously they hate you.

After fighting a 70 year war to destroy red communism we face another life-or-death struggle in the 21st century against green communism.

The conventional wisdom of the day is often spectacularly wrong. The most popular and successful opera of all time is undoubtedly "Carmen" by Georges Bizet. Yet it was much criticized when first performed and the unfortunate Bizet died believing that it was a flop. Similarly, when the most iconic piece of 20th century music was first performed in 1913-- Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" -- half the audience walked out. Those of us who defy the conventional wisdom about climate are actually better off than that. Unlike Bizet and Stravinsky in 1913, we KNOW that we will eventually be vindicated -- because all that supports Warmism is a crumbling edifice of guesswork ("models").

Al Gore won a political prize for an alleged work of science. That rather speaks for itself, doesn't it?

Jim Hansen and his twin

Getting rich and famous through alarmism: Al Gore is well-known but note also James Hansen. He has for decades been a senior, presumably well-paid, employee at NASA. In 2001 he was the recipient of a $250,000 Heinz Award. In 2007 Time magazine designated him a Hero of the Environment. That same year he pocketed one-third of a $1 million Dan David Prize. In 2008, the American Association for the Advancement of Science presented him with its Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award. In 2010 he landed a $100,000 Sophie Prize. He pulled in a total of $1.2 million in 2010. Not bad for a government bureaucrat.

See the original global Warmist in action here: "The icecaps are melting and all world is drowning to wash away the sin"

I am not a global warming skeptic nor am I a global warming denier. I am a global warming atheist. I don't believe one bit of it. That the earth's climate changes is undeniable. Only ignoramuses believe that climate stability is normal. But I see NO evidence to say that mankind has had anything to do with any of the changes observed -- and much evidence against that claim.

Seeing that we are all made of carbon, the time will come when people will look back on the carbon phobia of the early 21st century as too incredible to be believed

Meanwhile, however, let me venture a tentative prophecy. Prophecies are almost always wrong but here goes: Given the common hatred of carbon (Warmists) and salt (Food freaks) and given the fact that we are all made of carbon, salt, water and calcium (with a few additives), I am going to prophecy that at some time in the future a hatred of nitrogen will emerge. Why? Because most of the air that we breathe is nitrogen. We live at the bottom of a nitrogen sea. Logical to hate nitrogen? NO. But probable: Maybe. The Green/Left is mad enough. After all, nitrogen is a CHEMICAL -- and we can't have that!

The intellectual Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) must have foreseen Global Warmism. He said: "The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane."

The Holy Grail for most scientists is not truth but research grants. And the global warming scare has produced a huge downpour of money for research. Any mystery why so many scientists claim some belief in global warming?

For many people, global warming seems to have taken the place of "The Jews" -- a convenient but false explanation for any disliked event. Prof. Brignell has some examples.

Global warming skeptics are real party-poopers. It's so wonderful to believe that you have a mission to save the world.

There is an "ascetic instinct" (or perhaps a "survivalist instinct") in many people that causes them to delight in going without material comforts. Monasteries and nunneries were once full of such people -- with the Byzantine stylites perhaps the most striking example. Many Greenies (other than Al Gore and his Hollywood pals) have that instinct too but in the absence of strong orthodox religious committments they have to convince themselves that the world NEEDS them to live in an ascetic way. So their personal emotional needs lead them to press on us all a delusional belief that the planet needs "saving".

The claim that oil is a fossil fuel is another great myth and folly of the age. They are now finding oil at around seven MILES beneath the sea bed -- which is incomparably further down than any known fossil. The abiotic oil theory is not as yet well enough developed to generate useful predictions but that is also true of fossil fuel theory

Medieval Warm Period: Recent climatological data assembled from around the world using different proxies attest to the presence of both the MWP and the LIA in the following locations: the Sargasso Sea, West Africa, Kenya, Peru, Japan, Tasmania, South Africa, Idaho, Argentina, and California. These events were clearly world-wide and in most locations the peak temperatures during the MWP were higher than current temperatures.

Both radioactive and stable carbon isotopes show that the real atmospheric CO2 residence time (lifetime) is only about 5 years, and that the amount of fossil-fuel CO2 in the atmosphere is
maximum 4%.

Green/Left denial of the facts explained: "Rejection lies in this, that when the light came into the world men preferred darkness to light; preferred it, because their doings were evil. Anyone who acts shamefully hates the light, will not come into the light, for fear that his doings will be found out. Whereas the man whose life is true comes to the light" John 3:19-21 (Knox)

Against the long history of huge temperature variation in the earth's climate (ice ages etc.), the .6 of one degree average rise reported by the U.N. "experts" for the entire 20th century (a rise so small that you would not be able to detect such a difference personally without instruments) shows, if anything, that the 20th century was a time of exceptional temperature stability.

Recent NASA figures tell us that there was NO warming trend in the USA during the 20th century. If global warming is occurring, how come it forgot the USA?

Warmists say that the revised NASA figures do not matter because they cover only the USA -- and the rest of the world is warming nicely. But it is not. There has NEVER been any evidence that the Southern hemisphere is warming. See here. So the warming pattern sure is looking moth-eaten.

The latest scare is the possible effect of extra CO2 on the world’s oceans, because more CO2 lowers the pH of seawater. While it is claimed that this makes the water more acidic, this is misleading. Since seawater has a pH around 8.1, it will take an awful lot of CO2 it to even make the water neutral (pH=7), let alone acidic (pH less than 7).

In fact, ocean acidification is a scientific impossibility. Henry's Law mandates that warming oceans will outgas CO2 to the atmosphere (as the UN's own documents predict it will), making the oceans less acid. Also, more CO2 would increase calcification rates. No comprehensive, reliable measurement of worldwide oceanic acid/base balance has ever been carried out: therefore, there is no observational basis for the computer models' guess that acidification of 0.1 pH units has occurred in recent decades.

The chaos theory people have told us for years that the air movement from a single butterfly's wing in Brazil can cause an unforeseen change in our weather here. Now we are told that climate experts can "model" the input of zillions of such incalculable variables over periods of decades to accurately forecast global warming 50 years hence. Give us all a break!

Scientists have politics too -- sometimes extreme politics. Read this: "This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism... I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals. In such an economy, the means of production are owned by society itself and are utilized in a planned fashion. A planned economy, which adjusts production to the needs of the community, would distribute the work to be done among all those able to work and would guarantee a livelihood to every man, woman, and child." -- Albert Einstein

The Lockwood & Froehlich paper was designed to rebut Durkin's "Great Global Warming Swindle" film. It is a rather confused paper -- acknowledging yet failing to account fully for the damping effect of the oceans, for instance -- but it is nonetheless valuable to climate atheists. The concession from a Greenie source that fluctuations in the output of the sun have driven climate change for all but the last 20 years (See the first sentence of the paper) really is invaluable. And the basic fact presented in the paper -- that solar output has in general been on the downturn in recent years -- is also amusing to see. Surely even a crazed Greenie mind must see that the sun's influence has not stopped and that reduced solar output will soon start COOLING the earth! Unprecedented July 2007 cold weather throughout the Southern hemisphere might even have been the first sign that the cooling is happening. And the fact that warming plateaued in 1998 is also a good sign that we are moving into a cooling phase. As is so often the case, the Greenies have got the danger exactly backwards. See my post of 7.14.07 and very detailed critiques here and here and here for more on the Lockwood paper and its weaknesses.

As the Greenies are now learning, even strong statistical correlations may disappear if a longer time series is used. A remarkable example from Sociology:"The modern literature on hate crimes began with a remarkable 1933 book by Arthur Raper titled The Tragedy of Lynching. Raper assembled data on the number of lynchings each year in the South and on the price of an acre’s yield of cotton. He calculated the correla­tion coefficient between the two series at –0.532. In other words, when the economy was doing well, the number of lynchings was lower.... In 2001, Donald Green, Laurence McFalls, and Jennifer Smith published a paper that demolished the alleged connection between economic condi­tions and lynchings in Raper’s data. Raper had the misfortune of stopping his anal­ysis in 1929. After the Great Depression hit, the price of cotton plummeted and economic condi­tions deteriorated, yet lynchings continued to fall. The correlation disappeared altogether when more years of data were added." So we must be sure to base our conclusions on ALL the data. In the Greenie case, the correlation between CO2 rise and global temperature rise stopped in 1998 -- but that could have been foreseen if measurements taken in the first half of the 20th century had been considered.

Greenie-approved sources of electricity (windmills and solar cells) require heavy government subsidies to be competitive with normal electricity generators so a Dutch word for Greenie power seems graphic to me: "subsidieslurpers" (subsidy gobblers)

Many newspaper articles are reproduced in full on this blog despite copyright claims attached to them. I believe that such reproductions here are protected by the "fair use" provisions of copyright law. Fair use is a legal doctrine that recognises that the monopoly rights protected by copyright laws are not absolute. The doctrine holds that, when someone uses a creative work in way that does not hurt the market for the original work and advances a public purpose - such as education or scholarship - it might be considered "fair" and not infringing.

There are also two blogspot blogs which record what I think are my main recent articles here and here. Similar content can be more conveniently accessed via my subject-indexed list of short articles here or here (I rarely write long articles these days)

NOTE: The archives provided by blogspot below are rather inconvenient. They break each month up into small bits. If you want to scan whole months at a time, the backup archives will suit better. See here or here .....